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Replenish is a fantastically innovative household cleaning product, not based on some new magical formula, but rather the bottle’s design. Founder Jason Foster explains in an interview with me about the story behind the bottle, and how its continuous reuse through easy-to-use pod at the bottom, saves people money, waste, and the planet from associated carbon emissions by shipping water. An elegant and intuitive solution indeed! Learn more at http://www.myreplenish.com

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John Viera who leads Ford Motor Company’s sustainable business strategies, speaks with me at Sustainable Brands 10 about their near, medium, and long term sustainability plans for vehicle engineering & design. Topics include eco-boost technology which use fewer cylinders in the internal combustion engine to achieve similar horsepower while using less gas; alternative fuel engines that accept ethanol, propane, and natural gas; hybrid & electric drivetrains; recycled and biobased soy materials procurement; and lightweighting.

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Linda Rogers who works in Sustainable Marketing and CSR at Coca-Cola, speaks with me at Sustainable Brands 10 about a few types of potential partnerships between brands and nonprofits; explains a joint cause program by Diet Coke and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to promote women’s health; and provides three essential tips for both brands and nonprofits in developing positive, collaborative relationships.

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David Mallen who works in the National Advertising Division of the U.S. Better Business Bureau, speaks with me at Sustainable Brands 10 about trends in the marketplace and what the future should hold for businesses and marketers making communications and associated claims about their products and services.

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Timberland’s Chief Marketing Officer, Mike Harrison, speaks in an interview with me on topics including: social media, brand stories and content that resonates with customers, what works and what doesn’t. Additionally, Mike explains how Earthkeepers isn’t just a shoe, but also a brand platform for authentic and credible communications with stakeholders and the public on Timberland’s corporate responsibility commitment and environmental stewardship efforts, and what they care about as a company. A human relationship with the great outdoors based on respect, love, and adventure.

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The social demands of the new marketplace are clear: be ethical and responsible. Global CEO Jez Frampton of Interbrand, discusses sustainability’s place on the business agenda, but notes that few brands are notable leaders and that only a small minority of employees feel prepared to take the issue head on. CSR and corporate responsibility for the most part haven’t resonated because marketing and basic identity communications superceded substantive change, progress, or radical product/service development. In addition to various research findings, Jez speaks on the role of brands and their strength as the key elements of value, and how they do have the power to do great things. Sometimes change the world in both small and bigger ways. Outlining principles from stories like Tom’s Shoes, Method, Aveda, Nokia, 3M, and Xerox, he goes on to give 3 steps for brands going forward.

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Real sustainability can best be achieved by creating better-made products designed to be re-used as well as recycled. Replenish’s flagship product, available later this year, is an eco-friendly, multi-surface household cleaner in a reusable bottle that makes concentrates easier to use, is safer for the environment and saves money for consumers and retailers.

I met the engineer/founder Jason Foster earlier this year at Sustainable Brands 10, where I also did a video interview. The bottle works and the refills look like a Glade (brand) cartridge. Self-explanatory, no? Don’t ship water, buy only what you need, everyone reduces affiliated carbon emissions from weight reduction.

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While it may be easy to attract the attention of a growing cross section of consumers with your social or environmental brand messaging – if you know the right language, not all consumers are so easy. Drawing from his book “Igniting Inspiration: A Persuasion Manual for Visionaries”, John Marshall Roberts outlines core principles of transformational communication, as illustrated through the groundbreaking marketing and messaging for President Obama’s historic presidential run. He illustrates how the audience can shift their thinking and apply this same framework to create breakthrough results for their own social and environmentally conscious business ventures through strategic, authentic values-based marketing and communications.

Crazy, energetic speaker with great ideas. His latest presentation from Sustainable Brands 10 (which I hope to show sometime this Fall), dives further into what I think of as radical emotional intelligence for communication design, for good

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An interesting new video to say the least. However, while the production is great and humorous, there are some important points to be made.

This is a campaign video, meant to dramatically simplify a complex subject, make it easy to understand, and influence people toward some type of action or line of thinking. That said, it is biased, and doesn’t meet the needs of fair and balanced reporting as would a journalistic segment. It goes beyond the max 10-30 seconds that television campaigns would run, and probably costs less to produce and distribute.

What Annie and the animators do well is employ both humor and scare tactics through colloquial narration and imagery. It is amusing! And it can also be quite influential.

As with every such campaign with a protagonist, there is a corresponding set of antagonists. This gentleman went to the work of dissecting Annie’s video with a detailed critique highlighting the campaign’s bias and simplification of facts. Briefly watch the rebuttal video here. Unfortunately, although this detractor expounding on the importance of objectivity, he gets personal and overly critical, thus missing the point of an effective rebuttal

What does all this say for communications? While producing media for marketing purposes is becoming increasingly common, there is a responsibility toward being objective and providing facts. While some people may be easily swayed through vivid imagery, reminders of personal values, and scare tactics, there are others who will watch closely and will proudly cry foul. Maybe there’s a strong counterargument in the works then. The good thing is that this all fosters further dialogue. However, certain subjects like this that are complex like climate change, people will only have so much mental space or time for. For this reason, objectivity is really damn important. Make any potential “holes” tight and open to interpretation.

Whether a campaign or promotional media piece is for ethically good or bad causes, left or right, good communicators will step outside themselves and create media that is credible and doesn’t overly rely on emotional appeal. Think in terms of the enemy or antagonists. Sometimes using manufactured doubt can be extremely helpful, akin to using an enemy’s weight to your advantage like in Judo. Just be ethical about it, and don’t lose sight of the message to drill home.

Just finished up a new graphic to shed some light on a perpetual 4 step process of meaningful marketing:

A macro perspective map of four activity sets that should be run concurrently for meaningful social media to gain traction and move forward, for both single and multiple projects. Given that the upperleft quadrant first highlights content production, one can assume this is a content production and interaction model (for which it would be great), but you can perceive it any way you want

Sometimes it’s only necessary to participate in one activity set, based on a project’s short scope. However, most of these four activities need to be undertaken at some point.